Although the band Dinosaurs acquired its name from
an off-the-cuff remark by Barry "The Fish" Melton at
an early gig when he responded to an audience request
as to whether they knew a specific song by saying
"No, we're just a bunch of old Dinosaurs," it was to
become a special band for Melton and fellow members.
It was also special to a devoted cult following of fans
and actually deserves more than a cursory mention
when reviewing the history of Bay Area music. In fact,
the band would in many ways redefine what was so
special about music from the Bay Area - spontaneity,
honesty and a no-nonsense approach. In essence it
was a fun band. Remember, the band flourished mostly
during the stoic synthesizer drenched 80's, which was
hardly one of music's better decades. True, they left
behind only one solitary album but they were a band of
the moment and very much an experience to be enjoyed
live as anyone that saw them will certainly testify.
By the time the band played the 50th anniversary of
the Golden Gate Bridge, Melton recalls, "People started
actually looking at us as some kind of civic representation."
Further explaining, "It really was the best band I was
in and that's no bullshit. We had a philosophy that if
we weren't doing it for fun we shouldn't be doing it.
It wasn't a serious project. When it got to resembling
work, we stopped doing it, and that wasn't until much
later, after Papa John died. Then it was a feeling of
we're doing this for a living or to make money. It was
like we were forcing it and it is not that we didn't take
some terrific guys out on the road with us. We took
Jerry Miller and David LaFlamme, and I always loved
playing with both of them."
It's no wonder that Melton recalls the band as the best
he was in, it contained members from the cream of
60s Bay Area bands; Spencer Dryden from Jefferson
Airplane and the New Riders of the Purple Sage,
Peter Albin from Big Brother and the Holding Compnay,
John Cipollina from Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Initially Robert Hunter was the Grateful Dead connection
and after about two years he was replaced by Merl
Saunders. When Cipollina passed away in 1989 Papa
John Creach, who is also now deceased joined the
ranks, and as Melton mentioned both Jerry Miller
(Moby Grape) and David LaFlamme (It's a Beautiful
Day) played with them for a short period of time.
Like many of the good things in life, the band formed
pretty much by accident in July 1982. Dinosaurs played
around 130 shows until they called it quits in June of
1996. Melton and Albin had known each other for
many years and still play together on a regular basis.
In fact, all the members had many years of high profile
experience, but more than that they didn't bring an
attitude with them. Melton recalls the early days, "I
was on the board of directors of this organization
called The Freedom Foundation which met inside
the San Quentin State Prison. The chairman of the
organization was this guy called Dennis Jones who
was doing life for three counts of conspiracy to commit
murder - he is out now. Well, he was promoting concerts
at the time, and Spencer was also on the board of
directors along with Norton Buffalo. Peter and I had
a trio and we booked ourselves a gig on the Russian
River, this was 1982 and our drummer fell out, so I
asked Spencer if he still played as he'd been half
managing the New Riders. He said sure." It was at
this show that the "Dinosaur" quip came and afterwards
they decided that what they had was probably part of
some bigger idea or concept. "When we got back we
called Cipollina to see what he was doing." John, of
course was in a half dozen bands at the time and as
Melton jokingly remembers "The offer to be in another
band was more than attractive to him, so he joined
up." By the time they played their second gig things
were beginning to take shape. "We booked ourselves
as a quartet and we called ourselves Dinosaurs, just
Dinosaurs. There never was a "the" in front of the
name." Manager Steve Keyser elaborates "Barry
pointed out that there were a lot of Dinosaurs and it
would be very presumptuous to say that they were
"The Dinosaurs." There were many other Dinosaurs,
and one of the nice things about about their live shows
was they would do whatever they could to get other
"Dinosaurs" to sit in, which happened a lot." In fact, it
happened right from the first show! Melton takes up
the story again. "I wrote up a press release for a gig at
the Old Waldorf, Alton Kelly did up a poster. "We did it
the old way. We went through the city and distributed
the posters and the first night we played tons of
people showed up. It sold out. A lot of our musical
contemporaries showed up, Bob Hunter among them.
Garcia was there but didn't play. Hunter jumps up on
stage and starts playing harmonica." Hunter ended up
hanging around after the show and one thing led to
another and he joined the band. Melton, Cipollina,
Dryden, Albin and Hunter were the first official line-up
of the band. "It lasted about a year and it was really
kind of successful on a local level" says Melton adding
"I don't know if we wanted to do anything with it or not.
We played LA, Phoenix, Denver, Santa Fe, Portland,
and Seattle."
The band did actually make one or two forays to the
East Coast but as Albin remembers "We didn't play
that much really. There were so many off-shoot bands.
Spencer didn't want to play unless it was an "event".
he wanted to make it a special kind of thing every time
we played. By 1987 Big Brother had gotten together
so there was a bit of a conflict sometimes." Dinosaurs
played mostly small theaters amd larger clubs but
outside of the Bay Area they didn't really have that big
a draw which made it difficult. "We had the one album
on Relix" recalls Albin. "They didn't promote it and
neither did we." Melton, however sees it a little
differently, "It was harder for us to play a lot because
we decided to do the posters, the light shows and all
that other good stuff which was kind of smart." But of
course, concurrently there were off-shoot bands, Fish
and Chip, The Melton, Cipollina, Saunders
Band that tended to play smaller clubs. They also
played with a variety of other folks including Novato
Frank, and of course Cipollina was in Terry and the
Pirates (another much underrated band) and the early
configuration of jam favorites Zero, as well as Problem
Child, San Francisco All-Stars
and Thunder & Lightning.
But despite some minor gripes the reality was Dinosaurs,
as Melton explains "was never meant to be a commercial
enterprise" and on that level one simply cannot argue
with their level of success! Keyser concludes "The
whole idea of the band was for it to be music of the
moment... to play what you feel at that moment which
is why they got into some long extended jams. It didn't
have the polish that some other bands had but it had
more of a warmth and feeling of what was going on at
the time. I regret that they didn't get a bit more exposure
and recognition for what they did. They were unique in
that they represented that 1965 to 1972 classic San
Francisco era as good as or better than any other
band in as much as they were an amalgamation of
players." Keyser did, however, understand their philosophy
"They clearly were not a commercial project, it was
just music for the love of it. It was never about the
money, it was never about success which is a bit
frustrating to me as a manager, but I understood and
went along with it."
One might reasonably argue that the band was a true
jamband long before the phrase had ever been coined
as it was always five or six musicians from various
bands jamming. Keyser further states, "They loved the
music and up until John died they were playing the
same music" says Keyser. Of course, that low-key
aspect in the end was somewhat detrimental as Albin
reflects, "When we first started as Dinosaurs we definitely
had a following with Dead Heads but when they realized
we were playing the same songs over and over again
they stopped coming. We did the same set all the time.
Barry didn't want to do a set list, he refused saying
that every audience was different and that he had to
feel out the audience and then pick the song, well he
picked the same songs all the time! We only rehearsed
about twice and with Bob Hunter we really needed to
rehearse. Sometimes on stage with Hunter he would
start a song that we that we had never heard. He wouldn't
even say what key it was in, what the tempo was or
the feel was. He would just start a song and just go
for it. In a way I liked that kind of concept but for
putting out recordings it just didn't work."
Of course, the band suffered a major tragedy when
John Cipollina passed away in 1989. John with his
tenacious and wild playing was a huge part of their
sound. Initially Melton recalled that they felt like
packing it in. "When John died I was devastated" he
recalls, "John and I were really tight. We had Fish and
Chip, Fish Stu, The Melton, Cipollina, Saunders Band,
we played with Novato Frank. After John died we didn't
play any dates for a while and then Merl said 'I'm really
tight with Papa John Creach, why don't we book a date
and try it.' I remember we had some rehearsals at Merl's
and it changed it, and it didn't change it because Papa
John was just as much a madman wailing away on
the violin as John was on guitar. It was neat having
him in the band... what an incredibly up guy, a really
nice man and his wife Gretchen was a really nice
person. It was special and it was a replacement that
[the] audience immediately accepted, not that there could
ever be a replacement for John, but lets face it there
was no denying John Creach was a dinosaur!"
And even though the dynamic of the band changed
with the arrival [of] Papa John the spirit and vibe was
intact and they continued to make some great music
until, sadly, Papa John passed on and some of that
music is represented on this set.
Many fans and members of the band felt that the lone
album they recorded, presented here as disc one never
quite captured the true power and intensity of the band.
Melton went as far as saying "There's a Dinosaurs
bootleg that was better than the album we recorded."
Even though most of these comments are true there's
still some good material on the disc. Hunter had
already left the band but he returned to the fold to
contribute to the stunning "Who Makes the Moves?"
and "Resurrection Rag." Melton's arrangement of the
traditional "Butcher's Boy" is also notable as are the
two live tracks, the slow burning soul grooves of
Merl Saunders singing Nina Simone's "Do I Move
you" and the blistering "Mona" which focusses on
the interplay between Cipollina and Melton. In this reissue
package the original album is bolstered by two
previously unreleased tracks which are outtakes from
the original sessions. Both are by the late Cipollina,
"Honky Tonk Jekyll and Hyde," a song that John played
in a number of his "many" bands and the quirky
"Overnight" which offers a glimpse at John's oddball
perhaps twisted sense of humor. The title of the set
"Friends of Extinction" is also the original title that
Cipollina had wanted to use. Out of respect for the
original producers of the album, neither of whom
could voice their opinions at the time of this reissue,
John obviously because he is sadly no longer with us
and Merl because he is unable to speak due to having
suffered from a stroke, the original running order of
the album is left intact, although Melton did eventually
concur that my take of switching "Who Makes the
Moves?" and "Lay Back Baby" was probably a better
choice. "You're probably more right on that as we used
to open the shows with "Who Makes the Moves?""
Dryden remembers that he wanted to do a live album
in its entirety but it was a struggle getting just the two
tracks on the album. He says, "There were two track board
tapes that I felt were more representative of the band than
the album. There were just all kinds of good stuff that
we could have used." Albin says "the studio recording we
did was okay but we were better live." Of course, given the
band's lack of commercial aspirations when it came time to
to do a record, funds were limited. Almost everyone in
retrospect agrees with Dryden's idea that they should
have recorded the entire thing live. Melton says "We
made a half serious attempt because we figured we
didn't really have enough money to make a really
good record. Merl and John produced it because the
rest of us had other stuff we had to do."
Disc two of this set is here to support the theory that
the band was better enjoyed in a live format. It is a
previously unreleased collection of concert material
that's intended to give a cross-section of music that
the band made covering the different line-ups and
members. It features contributions from all the key
members, as well as a few guests. These tracks were
culled from many performances and have been chosen
based on performance and sound quality. There were
some other great performances that truly reflect the
band's stature as a live unit, but due to uneven mixes,
tuning and other technical glitches they were unable
to be used. Sure, even here there are a few warts but
there's also some superb music that captures the essence
and spirit of the band. "I'm pretty excited about the
release," says Melton adding "it contains some of my best
ever guitar playing." In fact the jam-heavy tracks such as
"The Dance" and "Closer" really are testaments to that
fact. The latter in typical fashion finds Robbie Hoddinott
of Kingfish wandering onstage midway through and
adding a third guitar to the sonic onslaught of Cipollina
and Melton. And yes, there's the majestic Papa John
fiddle work on the mellower "I Can't Get Started With You," and Kathi
McDonald's ballsy duet with Pete Albin
on the Big Brother chestnut "Blind Man".
These two discs serve to remind one that Dinosaurs
despite not being a commercial enterprise made some
great music that as Keyser said in many ways exemplifies
the classic San Francisco sound as good as or better
than anyone else. Enjoy!
